How Corvettes Are Made: The Birth of America's Sports Car

My husband, Nick, helped delivere a "baby" in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Cradled in her leather, ivory seat, he inserted the key into the dashboard, and with one turn to the right, she let out "her" first mean cry - Vvvvvvrroooommm....rooom rooooom rooooom. Like a new father, Nick admired this 50^th Anniversary Edition Corvette, proud to have aided in her birth.

The end of the assembly line at the Bowling Green Assembly plant is where all new 'Vettes come off the conveyor to touch the ground for the first time. It takes 36 hours for them to wind through seven miles of conveyor systems, laid out in a building that covers the size of almost 22 football fields. This doesn't include the years of design, planning, testing, and camouflaging the car to avoid spy photographers, anxious to get a glimpse prior to production.

Approximately 18 cars are "born" per hour, with a total of 160 per day, and almost 37,000 in a year, including coupes, convertibles, and the fastest car ever made by Chevrolet and General Motors - the Corvette Z06.

Monday through Friday, tour guides take 50,000 visitors, annually, through the plant to shed light on how Corvettes are conceived.

"Let's talk first about paint," says the guide, a studious looking, local college student with glasses, as he pointed to the color wheel in the lobby. "There are eight color options for 2006: Black, Artic White, Machine Silver, Le Mans Blue, Velocity Yellow, Monterey Red, Victory Red, and Daytona Sunset Orange."

"Dupont manufactures the paint and keeps engineers on site to ensure quality. All exterior panels are made of a plastic polymer material, which receive three coats of paint: one coat of primer, one coat of color, and a final clear coat application. Paint is applied primarily in enclosed booths by robots programmed to ensure every edge, corner and flat surface of a panel are properly covered."

To keep dirt out, employees wear lint-resistant uniforms and must enter a special chamber which blows all dust and lint off them before entering the shop.